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Post by Tamrin on Oct 1, 2011 19:15:10 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Aug 1, 2014 13:19:21 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Aug 1, 2014 14:09:25 GMT 10
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Post by xnoubis on Aug 5, 2015 19:23:13 GMT 10
Historical periodisation is always fraught. When did the medieval period begin? When did it end? Difficult question. I think its safest to discuss the Enlightenment, as a historical period, rather than as a concept (and notice that by including the definite article there I think its clear that I will be addressing the specific period and not a general concept). So the following is all written under the presumption that we are interested in periodisation and history. Most straightforwardly the 18th century is identified as the Enlightenment, but really that's too straightforward and a little too narrow, so a more generous periodisation pushes back into the 17th century (often referred to as 'the Scientific Revolution'). There is some debate about where to begin though. Certainly the thinkers who are most strongly associated with the Enlightenment - Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, Rousseau, Hume, Kant and so on are all very 18th century figures. But what about Locke, Newton and Leibniz at one end of the spectrum or G.W.F. Hegel at the other?
I think some of the best work on this topic is done in the massive three volume series by Jonathan Israel - the thing I don't like with his work is that he tends to over emphasise atheistic tendencies associated with rationalism, but setting that aside for the moment - he anchors the Enlightenment in the work of Spinoza and the radical reception of Spinoza particularly in the North-Western corner of Europe (including Britain). Spinoza's philosophy, of course, flows out of Cartesian rationalism (although there are criticisms of Descartes in Spinoza's work there is also much in common). The tendencies Israel picks up on in Spinoza are both religious on one hand and political on the other - in particular his rejection of providence and teleological views of history, which then underwrote notions of sovereignty and push people into an unquestioning attitude. Thoughts that are later perhaps caught in by Immanuel Kant in his enlightenment motto Sapere Aude (dare to know) which was then famously re-used by William Wynn Wescott. As Kant understood the motto it really meant dare to use reason as your own guide to life, or dare to govern yourself through reason. In Kant's view Enlightenment was about humanity's emergence from a self-imposed 'minority' where we lived under the paternal authority of crown and altar. In any case if we accept that Israel is correct then the origins of the Enlightenment ought to be anchored in the second half of the 17th century rather than in the 18th century.
Of course there is room to critique that account, Spinoza seems a little late, Frances Bacon is already working with the right themes in 1620 in his text Instauratio Magna, whose frontispiece depicts a ship sailing between two great pillars. In that text there is a strong critique of scholastic logic and prior systems of knowledge and a call for a reformation of science - which he sees as the key to a brighter future, one where divine science and what we might now call natural science are kind of married. Its inspirational stuff in my view. In any case perhaps Bacon's commitments to religion and the divine lead Israel to want to set him aside and start with Spinoza, an error in my view. However I would actually question whether Spinoza was actually as atheistic as Israel suggests. It is my view that the Enlightenment, as a 'movement' was never atheistic, rather in my view the Enlightenment was the source of some quite radical theology - certainly much radical theology was, in the day, labeled as 'atheistic' but when its considered properly what we find is that God and the divine are not denied but just thought of on different terms. Of course there is some sense to viewing Spinoza's pantheism as atheistic, equating God with nature might seem to naturalise God (although it is just as much a divinisation of nature) - this was very influential on later German Romantic thinkers and the radical pantheists of the late 18th century (people like Schelling in his early work).
In any case, I would see Frances Bacon as a more fitting modern starting point for the Enlightenment in terms of historical periodisation. Aquinas and, of course, his teacher Albertus Magnus, are both important people in terms of kicking off the Aristotelian turn that was so important in the 13th century. Clearly that is an important movement as it introduces fresh thought into the Platonic, Neo-Platonic and Augustinian dominated thinking of prior centuries. But Importantly people like Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza and many others saw themselves as rejecting scholasticism and by the time they were writing scholasticism had become equated with Aristotelianism and Aquinas. There is a complex story to tell though about what happens in the years between Aquinas and the early 17th century, with the Paris Condemnations featuring strongly as a Platonic/Neo-Platonic backlash against the creeping Aristotelianism in Medieval thinking, but nonetheless by the time we get to Bacon scholastic thought, Aquinas and Aristotelian science/logic are all seen as being one piece. There is a self-conscious break that occurs, it is literally dripping from the work of people like Bacon, with scholastic thought and Aristotelianism - which is in part a pity as Aristotle himself is a very interesting figure (but Aristotelianism is different to Aristotle) - they view scholasticism and Aristotelianism as an intellectual dead-end. It is for this reason, the fact that there was a self-conscious break in the intellectual tradition, a break that is a driving force in the work of thinkers like Bacon, that we should see something 'new' coming around the beginning of the 17th century and that current of newness is the animating spirit of the Enlightenment as an intellectual movement.
Just my 20cents worth.
P.S. While my view above is not strictly speaking based on Jonathan Israel's view here are references to his three big works on the Enlightenment - which amount to nearly 3000 pages all told, so a massive contribution to intellectual history: J. Israel (2002) Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (1650-1750), Oxford University Press, Oxford. J. Israel (2009) Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man (1670-1752) Oxford University Press, Oxford. J. Israel (2013) Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution and Human Rights (1750-1790) Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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